The Triumph of Christ.
As the bird, among the beloved leaves, reposing on the nest of her sweet brood through the night which hides things from us, who, in order to see their longed-for looks and to find the food wherewith she may feed them, in which heavy toils are pleasing to her, anticipates the time upon the open twig, and with ardent affection awaits the sun, fixedly looking till the dawn may break; thus my Lady was standing erect and attentive, turned toward the region beneath which the sun shows least haste;1 so that I, seeing her rapt and eager, became such as he who in desire should wish for something, and in hope is satisfied. But short while was there between one and the other WHEN: that of my awaiting, I mean, and of my seeing the heavens become brighter and brighter. And Beatrice said, “Behold the hosts of the triumph of Christ, and all the fruit harvested by the revolution of these spheres.”2 It seemed to me her face was all aflame, and her eyes were so full of joy that I must needs pass it over without description.
1 The meridian.
2 By the beneficent influences of the planets.
As in the clear skies at the full moon Trivia1 smiles among the eternal nymphs who paint the heaven through all its depths, I saw, above myriads of lights, a Sun that was enkindling each and all of them, as ours kindles the supernal shows;2 and through its living light the lucent Substance3 shone so bright upon my face that I sustained it not.
1 An appellation of Diana, and hence of the moon.
2 According to the belief, referred to at the opening of the twentieth Canto, that the sun was the source of the light of the stars.
3 Christ in his glorified body.
O Beatrice, sweet guide and dear!
She said to me, “That which overcomes thee is a power from which naught defends itself. Here is the Wisdom and the Power that opened the roads between heaven and earth, for which there had already been such long desire.”
As fire from a cloud unlocks itself by dilating, so that it is not contained therein, and against its own nature falls down to earth, so my mind, becoming greater amid those feasts, issued from itself; and what it became cannot remember.
“Open thine eyes and look at what I am; thou hast seen things such that thou art become able to sustain my smile.” I was as one who awakes from a forgotten dream and endeavors in vain to bring it back again to memory, when I heard this invitation, worthy of such gratitude that it is never effaced from the book which records the past. If now all those tongues which Polyhymnia and her sisters made most fat with their sweetest milk should sound to aid me, one would not come to a thousandth of the truth in singing the holy smile and how it made the holy face resplendent. And thus in depicting Paradise the consecrated poem needs must make a leap, even as one who finds his way cut off. But whoso should consider the ponderous theme and the mortal shoulder which therewith is laden would not blame it if under this it tremble. It is no coasting voyage for a little barque, this which the intrepid prow goes cleaving, nor for a pilot who would spare himself.
“Why doth my face so enamour thee that thou turnest not to the fair garden which beneath the rays of Christ is blossoming? Here is the rose,1 in which the Divine Word became flesh: here are the lilies2 by whose odor the good way was taken.” Thus Beatrice, and I, who to her counsel was wholly prompt, again betook me unto the battle of the feeble brows.
1 The Virgin.
2 The Apostles and Saints. The image is derived from St. Paul (2 Corinthians, ii. 14): “Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.” In the Vulgate the words are, “odorem notitiae suae manifestat per nos.”
As my eyes, covered with a shadow, have ere now seen a meadow of flowers in a sunbeam which streamed bright through a rifted cloud, so saw I many throngs of splendors flashed-upon from above with burning rays, without seeing the source of the gleams. O benignant Power which so dost impress them, upwards didst thou exalt thyself to bestow space there for my eyes, which were powerless.1
1 The eyes of Dante, powerless to endure the sight of the glorified body of Christ, when that is withdrawn on high, are able to look upon those whom the light of Christ illumines.
The name of the fair flower which I ever invoke both morning and evening, wholly constrained my mind to gaze upon the greater fire.1 And when the form and the glory of the living star, which up. there surpasses as here below it surpassed, were depicted in both my eyes, through the mid heavens a torch, formed in a circle in fashion of a crown, descended, and engirt it, and revolved around it. Whatever melody sounds sweetest here below, and to itself most draws the soul, would seem a cloud which, rent apart, thunders, compared with the sound of that lyre wherewith was crowned the beauteous sapphire by which the brightest Heaven is ensapphired. “I am angelic Love, and I circle round the lofty joy which breathes from the bosom which was the hostelry of our desire; and I shall circle, Lady of Heaven, while thou shalt follow thy Son and make the supreme sphere more divine because thou enterest it.” Thus the circling melody sealed itself up, and all the other lights made resound the name of Mary.
1 The Virgin, — Rosa mistica, — the brightest of all the host that remained.
The royal mantle1 of all the volumes2 of the world, which is most fervid and most quickened in the breath of God and in His ways, had its inner shore so distant above us that sight of it, there where I was, did not yet appear to me. Therefore my eyes had not the power to follow the incoronate flame, which mounted upward following her own seed. And as a little child which, when it has taken the milk, stretches its arms toward its mother, through the spirit that flames up outwardly, each of these white splendors stretched upward with its summit, so that the deep aflection which they had for Mary was manifest to me. Then they remained there in ray sight, singing “Regina coeli “ so sweetly that never has the delight departed from me. Oh how great is the plenty that is heaped up in those most rich chests which were good laborers in sowing here below! Here they live and enjoy the treasure that was acquired while weeping in the exile of Babylon, where the gold was left aside.3 Here triumphs, under the high Son of God and of Mary, in his victory, both with the ancient and with the new council, he who holds the keys of such glory.4
[l] The Primum Mobile, the ninth Heaven, which revolves around all the others.
2 The revolving spheres.
3 Despising the treasures of the world, in the Babylonish exile of this life, they laid up for themselves treasures in Heaven.
4 St. Peter.